Polysemic
by sweetAnonimitie
Summary: In which Ciel is foiled, in full duplicity of the word's meanings. Be prepared to dig up that barrow in Geatland, dear reader, because this one is going to get long. Essentially a verbose excuse for banter. If you dig it, dig in.
1. Chapter 1

"Have you brought it?" The child demanded insolently, slumped over his desk and glaring at the servant with his one good eye.

"Sir?" The butler had come to collect the dishes from breakfast. It was highly unlike the young lord phantomhive to make such a miscalculation.

Sebastian's puzzlement seemed to disorient the boy for a second but he shook his head, straightening precariously in his seat "Right, so..." Then suddenly he giggled, a little oddly, "I disappear when you call my name."

Sebastian recognized their riddle game, despite the odd circumstance. "Silence," he gave answer.

Ciel's face twisted into a cloudy sort of consternation "You don't give the orders here. I'll speak when I want."

"The riddle, sir," he reminded slowly, his voice as calm as his gaze was suspicious.

"Oh, right- erm, alright then I give up."

"It was you, sir."

"The answer?"

"No, sir, it was you that gave the riddle."

"Oh..."

Sebastian's brow knit, "Are you quite well, young master?"

"Hm? Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Go- see about breakfast."

"Tea, sir."

"Tea for breakfast?"

"No, young master, you just ate your breakfast. The dishes are right there. It would be time for tea." Sebastian's mouth became a thin pale line, with just the hint of a frown at the edges.

Ciel laughed. It was a mangy, diseased thing. "Who killed your smile, Sebastian?"

The butler, for one extraordinary instance in a singularly long life, was unsure how to respond.

"Riiight- there!" The lord phantomhive lurched forward to point, almost falling from his seat. "I've only ever seen the ghost of it, right there, right there on your face. So tell me Demon, who killed your smile?"

Sebastian's gaze sharpened. "There are so many ways a smile can die, young master, I hardly know where to start," he said, advancing. "There is poison," he checked the boy's pulse, "assassination," he put the back of his hand to the boy's flush, "suicide," he lifted first one lid, then the other, "or plague," he turned the boy's hands over and inspected the palms. "Most often, though, it is foolishness."

"What would be foolishness?" Ciel asked in genuine bewilderment, his gaze unfocused and his voice vague.

"To not return to bed, when one is unwell." The demon affirmed softly without missing a step.

It took a second, but then the young master's brow furrowed. "I will remain in my study until _I_ see fit to return. I am the master of this house! Perhaps _you_ are feeling unwell." He slapped away the demon's hands and jerked straight his own clothes. The demon retreated to an impersonal distance. Ciel impatiently gestured the butler's dismissal, and the demon bowed and turned to comply.

"Go see about breakfast." Ciel commanded flippantly.

Sebastian's hand stilled at the doorknob, "You mean tea, sir."

There was a long pause. "Of course that's what I meant. Now if you have the time to be correcting me, it should already have been done."

Another pause, "Yes, my lord." He was halfway out the door when he heard the ominous dull crash of a body hitting the floor.

It had been poison after all.


	2. Chapter 2

He knew by the cadence of the boy's breaths that Ciel had come to. There was a rhythm to sleeping, and a music to waking. Sebastian waited, but the breath did not rise into words' song, and so he shrugged and continued to move about to the quiet interlude.

When at last the boy spoke, the words made the silence dark in the same way that the light cast shadows. "They want me back." His voice almost a whisper.

"Who, my lord?" Sebastian asked, though he knew perfectly well whom the little lord referenced with his trembling voice.

The boy gave no answer. Only, thinking himself covered by darkness, curled in on himself in a self-comforting gesture, his fingers twining through the blankets to bless the angry raised scar with shaking fingertips.

"This has happened far too often."

The boy's shadow-blinded eyes looked up, seeking an approximation of his face by the source of the demon's words. But as always, the prey was dead off. This amalgam of sin did not walk in a body of flesh. The demon's words did not come of life's breath but of dark thought and darker circumstance. In the daylight, he cast his voice so elegantly from where its source ought to be, but in the night that blinded his victims he had no need for such pretense. He was nestled just beside the boy, in his bed, so close that if he had breath the warmth of it would wrap around the skin of the hapless child's neck.

"What do you mean?" Ciel asked, as the demon watched the subtle nuance of his throat.

"Can you call to mind, my lord, the last excursion that did not end in your urgent need of rescue?" The genteel voice at the foot of the bed continued, and Ciel continued to stare into the empty space from which it originated.

"In my opinion, that is a breach of the terms of our mutual agreement." The demon uttered, his eyes tracing the chill down Ciel's spine that his insidious implication inspired.

"If anything, that would be a failure to uphold your part of the contract." Ciel rebuffed, and Sebastian had to admire the convincingly disaffected demeanor that the terrified boy mustered.

"I cannot be held liable for deliberate self-imperilment."

"Calculated risks," Ciel parried, though he gulped at his bluff.

"Risks are definitionally the result of miscalculation," Sebastian stated, "No, this problem requires a more- _permanent_ solution." Pressed this close, the demon felt the boy's quake in his own lanky limbs.

But then, a demon could only be expected to have a wicked sense of humor. With a razor grin that the victim could not see, he rose from where the boy hadn't known he lurked and walked casually back to where he had left his voice.

"It seems an added measure of security is in order," he commented lightly, grinning twice over at the young noble's shaky exhalation of breath.

"Right, of course," Ciel recovered, though breathily, "What did you have in mind? A new servant?"

"A new Master."

There was a long pause, "That's not funny." Ciel stated.

"Of course not," though it was, "I misspoke," though he hadn't. "I meant that thus far acting as bait has accomplished nothing, save attraction of the wrong sort of predator. I will find a suitable replacement, and we shall embark on a different approach."

Ciel sighed testily. Having nothing else, he quipped "Your age is showing."

"Is it?" he inquired mildly.

"No bloody soul in England's said 'shall' in centuries."

"I'd forgotten," he apologized, because he actually had. Difficult enough to play at human, then they had to keep changing the rules. Really, it was downright meanspirited.

"I'm shocked." the boy drawled, wielding sarcastic derision with the malice of a child burning ants.

"My lord," the demon answered vaguely, by which he signalled that their conversation had wandered past its utility, and excused himself. But for the second time that day the boy's voice caused him to linger at the doorway.

"Sebastian?" The plaintive call was so desperately juvenile that the demon turned, silhouetted in the light of the doorway. Ciel's eyes were as blinded by the light that filled them as by the darkness, so Sebastian did not have to suppress the smug grin that lit his features as he took in the vivid indigo of the boy's best feature, and the dull milky sheen that he had put over the right to ruin it.

"Sweet dreams, My Lord."

The rectangle of light narrowed, illuminating first the deep blue eye of the lord, and then the scarred eye of the boy, then leaving them both in shadow as the butler shut the door.


End file.
